Moto G launch in India by January, may be priced under Rs 15,000

India Today Online

Last Updated: NOV 15, 2013

New Delhi

Moto G smartphone

Motorola is coming back to India. In January, Motorola will be back with a phone that's just the right phone for India. A pure Google phone, like Nexus phones, priced way below phones of similar specifications are sold here. India is a price-sensitive market and this seems to be a deal out of the box. Motorola has not revealed its price yet, but one can safely put it at about Rs 15,000.

Motorola's super-slim Razr phones were quite a rage at one time. Its Android powered phones did pretty well. Then Google bought Motorola's mobile phone business and to everyone's shock, Moto wound up its operations in India and Southeast Asia, to focus on America. It launched a couple of phones including the robust Moto X. But it failed to make its presence felt in a market dominated by iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy phones.

When Moto G was unveiled last week, Motorola surprised everyone with its low price point. For about 179 dollars, one could have a phone that has a quad-core processor and a 4.5-inch high-def screen. For 20 dollars more, the phone's memory is bumped up from 8GB to 16GB. But there were no signs till yesterday that the phone will be sold in countries Moto had shut shop. Like India.

"Moto G goes on sale this week in Brazil and parts of Europe and will be available within the next few weeks throughout Latin America, Europe, Canada and parts of Asia. It will be available in the US, India, the Middle East and more of Asia in early January," according to the official Motorola blog.

Well, Mark Randal, Senior Vice President, Supply Chain & Operations at Motorola, gave that green signal on Thursday. Moto G will come to India in January 2014. And the version coming to India will be dual-SIM as well. Moto G has been launched with Android 4.3 in markets where it is already selling. Those phones will get updated to 4.4 Kit Kat in the December and January. In India, it will come with Android 4.4 pre-loaded.

It has a 5 megapixel snapper with 4X digital zoom and a secondary front-facing 1.3 MP camera. Phones with similar specs are selling for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 400 processor is not the latest and top-class but it is quite fast. So, Moto G will be able to play full HD videos. According to a Qualcomm blogpost, "Moto G owners also get an extra 50 GB of Google Drive storage for free for two years, so you can keep and share photos, movies and more, on top of the standard 15 GB."

There are many Android phones selling for under Rs 10,000 in India, but when it comes to power and performance, Moto G is capable of competing with the colourful iPhone 5C. Moto G offers pure Google experience, that means faster updates and bugfixes. This is one of the problems Android phones have as manufacturers take time to incorporate updates and fixes into their proprietary skins.

So will Moto G make it in India? That will depend on its sales and service partners because the company itself has no infrastructure here. Google's flagship phone Nexus 5 is also coming to India this month, but Nexus is made by LG and also sold by them here.